Understanding human evolution through the study of whale evolution Brief definition and history of mammals How did land-based mammals return to the sea? Fossils from "transitional species" trace ...

As evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin points out, "In one sense, evolution didn't invent anything new with whales. It was just tinkering with land mammals. It's using the old to make the new." ...

suborder of whales, Archaeoceti. These fossils represent one of the major stories of evolution: the emergence of the whale as an ocean-going mammal from a previous life as a land-based animal. This is ...